shows itself in the most direct way of all, that of dream. 'Last night,'
he writes, at Innismaan, 'after walking in a dream among buildings with
strangely intense light on them, I heard a faint rhythm of music
beginning far away on some stringed instrument.

It came closer to me, gradually increasing in quickness and volume with
an irresistibly definite progression. When it was quite near the sound
began to move in my nerves and blood, to urge me to dance with them.

I knew that if I yielded I would be carried away into some moment of
terrible agony, so I struggled to remain quiet, holding my knees together
with my hands.

The music increased continually, sounding like the strings of harps tuned
to a forgotten scale, and having a resonance as searching as the strings
of the 'cello.

Then the luring excitement became more powerful than my will, and my
limbs moved in spite of me.

In a moment I was swept away in a whirlwind of notes. My breath and my
thoughts and every impulse of my body became a form of the dance, till I
could not distinguish between the instrument or the rhythm and my own
person or consciousness. For a while it seemed an excitement that was
filled with joy; then it grew into an ecstasy where all existence was
lost in the vortex of movement. I could not think that there had been a
life beyond the whirling of the dance.

Then with a shock, the ecstasy turned to agony and rage. I struggled to
free myself but seemed only to increase the passion of the steps I moved